Bearing swaging tools are commonly used, for example, in the aircraft industry to fix bearings in place in bores adapted to house those bearings. The prior art provides several structures for swaging bearings to bearing housings.
A bearing swaging tool is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,111,575, issued to Grunze, et al. on May 12, 1992. Other structures for swaging bearings to bearing housings are provided in the following U.S. Pat. No. 3,262,298, issued Jul. 26, 1966; U.S. Pat. No. 3,444,606, issued May 20, 1969; U.S. Pat. No. 3,639,961, issued Feb. 8, 1972; U.S. Pat. No. 3,986,241, issued Oct. 19, 1976; U.S. Pat. No. 4,318,212, issued Mar. 9, 1982; U.S. Pat. No. 4,428,105, issued Jan. 31, 1984; U.S. Pat. No. 4,476,617, issued Oct. 16, 1984; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,574,448, issued Mar. 11, 1986.
In the aircraft industry, bearing swaging tools are used not only in fabrication of airplanes, but also in installation of replacement bearings during maintenance of the aircraft. In many cases, the bearings are located in confined spaces. Many prior art bearing swaging tools are not useful in confined spaces, as they require a drill press, or other external structure, such as C-clamp structure, for application of the axial force required for swaging. Disassembly of the aircraft is normally required if these bearing swaging tools are used.
Additionally, many prior art bearing swaging constructions involve complicated structures which result in increased manufacturing costs or are impractical and difficult for use in confined spaces.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,111,575, issued to Grunze, et al. on May 12, 1992, shows a bearing swaging tool which is an improvement over prior art tools but requires the use of a fairly complex structure, and the operator of the swaging tool must rotate two separate members of the tool to perform an accurate and efficient swaging operation. Additionally, the swaging tool of the '575 patent requires a substantial number of components which results in increased cost of manufacture, and an increase in the size of the swaging tool.
The prior art structures do not provide a bearing swaging tool that works by rotation of a single member of the swaging tool wherein the rotation of the single member results in the tightening of the bearing swaging tool as well as the rotation of swaging members while still permitting control of the amount of rotation with respect to the bearing without undue tightening of the swaging members against the bearing.